Android Users In China Receive The Most Malware Attacks

A rather interesting report by NetQin Mobile has discovered that 64% of all mobile attacks on Android devices in the first quarter of 2011, affected those in China. Coming very far behind in number 2 position would be the US at 7.6%. So why is it that China seems to be receiving the brunt of all these attacks? Well taken from the press release:

According to NetQin, about 2.53 million Android users were infected with mobile viruses or malware in the first quarter of 2011, with most of them occurring in China, which is partly due to the easy availability of “white box” phones (open phones that are not tied to particular carriers) and a general lack of mobile security awareness among mobile phone users. “White box” phones often run outdated versions of mobile software and are not provided with security support from legal carriers. The lack of mobile security awareness further adds fuel to the flames, as users often ignore protective measures when engaged in mobile activities, such as using mobile payment channels, web browsing or clicking on URLs from unknown sources, thus allowing more mobile viruses and malware to intrude their mobile devices.

It also seems that the majority of these attacks happen to users running on Froyo 2.2 versions of the Android operating system while 16% of the attacks occur on Gingerbread 2.3 users. I guess all these issues can be attributed to OS fragmentation of the Android system and the lack of quality control of the apps that come into the Android Market. With such shocking statistics Android users out there be careful of what you download!